Saturday, January 21, 2017

Marine Le Pen and the international, a wager to double-edged sword – The World

The president of the FN is located in Koblenz, Germany, Saturday, for a conference with its allies in the euro-sceptics.

Marine Le Pen does not like to be compared to Jean-Luc Mélenchon. Yet, as the leader of France insubordinate, the president of the Front national does not cease to invoke personalities, or foreign political parties to try to register in their wake.

Mr Mélenchon has successively claimed connections with Die Linke in Germany, Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, Syriza in Greece or Podemos in Spain. Mme The Pen, on its side, has encouraged Norbert Hofer, the candidate of the freedom party for the presidential election in austria, welcomed the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States, or has applauded the decision of the first british minister Theresa May to opt for a ” hard Brexit “. As much responsible for the first plan which the european parliament claims to better establish its “présidentialité” and try to break its isolation on the international scene.

The conference of the European group of nations and freedoms (ENL), in which the candidate to the presidential participates, Saturday, January 21, in Koblenz, Germany, is part of this objective. Will be present, in particular, the northern League in italy, the FPÖ in the austrian – without its chairman, Heinz-Christian Strache, who is made to wear pale, and whose troops are wondering about the opportunity to display with the FN and the PVV netherlands led by Geert Wilders.

Read also : the unity of The european populist breaks

Reconciliation laborious

The meeting is held the day after the inauguration of Mr. Trump, and has to draw the turn conservative and populist of the Old continent, that its participants hope to translate at the polls in 2017. The netherlands and Germany would vote for the legislative elections, respectively in march and September, and France elects a new president in may. the ” We are going to draw the Europe that we want, which is very different from that which we experience “, wants to believe Marine Le Pen.

just three months before the first round of the presidential election, the president of the FN will be displayed for the first time at the side of Frauke Petry, co-chair of the AfD. This young party anti-euro and anti-immigration, launched in 2013 by notable and some economists, the size of croupières within the right to chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU).

The approximation of this training with the FN remains laborious, as the party co-founded by Jean-Marie Le Pen – who has no ally in addition to-Rhine – retains an image as radical abroad. And the intransigence of Marine Le Pen in its fight against the european Union also raises the question, in a country where public opinion remains favourable to the EU. But the image given Saturday should give a boost to their relations.

” The meeting of Koblenz represents the current market straight europeans, ” notes historian Nicolas Lebourg, author, with Jean-Yves Camus, from the book The Straight extremes in Europe (Threshold). in The AfD, it is a right that is becoming more radical and without end, and Marine Le Pen is useful because it represents a flag in the face of Angela Merkel. Marine Le Pen, for his part, appears with a right supposedly manager. The FN is at a crossroads ideological Europe : the extreme right, which wants to standardize is like him, and the right is becoming more radical goes to the FN. “

Read also : The european populist trapped in the Brexit

Position device

This leads some, within the AfD, to go even further than the FN mariniste.Björn Höcke, head of the party in Thuringia, ruled, Tuesday, that the memorial of the Holocaust built in Berlin represented a ” monument of shame “, and called on the Germans to” a 180° turn of our policy of memory “.

These days, Mme The Pen has assured that Donald Trump and Theresa May were ” in the process of implementing the program of Marine Le Pen “. Or how to attempt to reassure, at little cost, the French electorate, placing himself on the same plane as the two heads of State and foreign governments.

” It commits an error of analysis in claiming them, said Jean-Yves Camus, director of the Observatory of radicalités policies of the Foundation Jean-Jaurès. in Jean-Luc Mélenchon could claim Podemos or Syriza, the left motion relatively new. But the Brexit is not the work of a single UKIP of Nigel Farage, far from it. The electorate favourable to the output of the european Union, the United Kingdom, is heterogeneous socially and politically, it goes too far in the conservative Party. And Trump has no equivalent with the parties present at Koblenz, he has campaigned with a part of the republican establishment. This is not an outsider, such as the AfD or the Northern League in italy. “

Shunned abroad

This position the device feels hard to Marine Le Pen when she makes trips abroad, beyond the circle of its european allies. The european parliament has not been made in the United Kingdom during the referendum campaign on the Brexit in 2016, after the assumption of his coming has sparked an outcry across the Channel. His trip in Québec, in march 2016, has resulted in a failure, since it has been shunned by local politicians, and étrillée by a section of the press on the scene.

also Read : Trump elected, the american dream of european populist

his recent coming so-called ” private “ in New York, on the 12th of January, it is not apparent that the photo is a little blurry on the social networks, responsible for French policy sitting in a café of the ” Trump Tower “, without the prospect of a meeting with the owner of the premises. On-site, the president of the FN has been guided in the networks new york, as revealed in Liberation, by the former mp and FN (1986-1988) Pierre Ceyrac, an old companion of his father, Jean-Marie Le Pen. Not something to give the image an irresistible momentum.